After arriving in Bangkok the previous week after a very long bus ride, we decided that we would fly to Laos and avoid a another good 12 hour bus trip. We settled on Nok Air, a Thai budget carrier based out of old din Kuang airport in Bangkok” which advertised the cheapest direct flight. Despite only visiting Kh Tao and Bangkok in thailand, we needed to do a visa run somewhere as we had only been given a 15 day visa as we came by land into the country. We settled on Laos rather than head to Myanmar, as the cost of getting to Myanmar was significant and we would only had 12 days – definitely not long enough.

Having arrived into Bangkok from Koh Tao at 2am instead of midnight, we got a few hours sleep before getting an 8 am shuttle from Khao San road to the airport which was over an hour away. Although our flight wasn’t until 12pm, there was no other shuttle, and a taxi would break the budget bubble. The traffic can be horrendously unpredictable, a thought many of our fellow travellers on the shuttle had in mind so they had headed out early too.
Once we were all checked in we headed to the gate – No aircraft – obviously we were not going to run to schedule today. The plane (when it did emerge) had a ducks bill painted in the front of a bright orange plane; pretty entertaining colour scheme!!
Boarding the aircraft we had a look at our seat numbers; 33A/B – we thought they were probably down the back – the ones with easy access to the extra snacks and toilets. However, for some obtuse reason they started the numbering from the late twenties
The flight was pretty smooth arriving at Udon Thani, a small international airport on the border with Laos.
I’m was really unsure of the merits of the lady greeting us for our onward bus journey wearing an entire highvis outfit – at least we could see her as she escorted us to the ‘limo’ transfer desk where she purchased our tickets for the next leg. Although advertised as a direct flight, it was actually made up of a small domestic leg and two bus transfers through to Laos with boarder formalities in the middle. This made the whole exercise last about 4 hours instead of the hour flight direct to Vientiane; but saved nearly a hundred dollars so pretty good service. The ‘limo’ taxi took us to the friendship bridge, some 50km away.

Luckily I had read the wikitravel page on this boarder crossing so there wasn’t the daunting feeling of being dumped at a boarder and having to negioatate the long stretch of no mans land. Luckily we also encountered a retired ‘white guy’ on the small transfer bus across the friendship bridge, who was doing a visa run back into Laos. He kindly helped us with the myriad of steps required to get a Lao visa ‘on arrival’. Luckily (unlike going into Vietnam) we had some passport photos ready, so it all went pretty smoothly – probably helped by the extra US dollar ‘overtime’ fee (it was 3pm on a weekday). Given the speed at which he simply stamped my passport after getting his $30US, it seems this visa system was set up solely to get foreign currency, rather than focusing on security.
Visa approved, our Nok air transport was waiting on the other side, so it was a quick trip into Vientiane to find our hostel.

Welcome to Laos !